Team Rundown: Friday 2003 Malaysian GP

By Andrew Hooper
March 21 2003

	Team Rundown
	Scuderia Ferrari Marlboro: Michael Schumacher 1st, Rubens Barrichello 2nd. Ferrari ended the day 1-2 and the team was happy with the situation. "We are not sure which tyre to choose," said technical director Ross Brawn. "It is a bit difficult here. Having said that Bridgestone has definitely improved over last year. We are now trying to calculate how much fuel our rivals were carrying, working on comparisons between the sessions today. The times were changing quite a lot today and one of the reasons for that was the track temperature. That had a big effect." BMW Williams F1 Team: Juan Pablo Montoya 3rd, Ralf Schumacher 13th. Ralf Schumacher had a bad day and ended up 10 places further down the qualifying order than his team mate Montoya. "I'm not happy," he said. "I cannot explain the big gap because the car felt right this morning but when I went into qualifying I had big oversteer." "We have to work on Ralf's car," said the team's senior operations engineer Sam Michael. "There are obviously some balance problems. We measured 61 degrees C on the track but neither the car nor the tyres seem to suffer from that." "The performance of Juan shows what the car can do," said BMW's Mario Theissen. "Ralf had to fight the car in every corner. He even told us during the qualifying run that he was having severe balance problems." West McLaren Mercedes: Kimi Raikkonen 4th, David Coulthard 5th. It was a disappointing day for McLaren. "Kimi made a mistake this morning," said managing director Martin Whitmarsh. "He had an excursion and so we had limited track time after that. Our programme did not allow us any low fuel running. And then he made a mistake at the end of his lap as well. David had a fairly routine morning. He was not comfortable with the set-up and going out first is not easy. It was a reasonable performance but it was slower than he went in the morning so we have some work to do for tomorrow." Mild Seven Renault F1 Team: Jarno Trulli 6th, Fernando Alonso 10th. "The day worked out as we had planned. We used the same engines all day and we were able to put up some strong qualifying performances," said technical director Mike Gascoyne. "The most important thing will be to remain competitive tomorrow. It was a shame that Fernando had a lot of oversteer at the end of his lap." Sauber Petronas: Nick Heidfeld 7th, Heinz-Harald Frentzen 8th. Heinz-Harald Frentzen had an electrical problem in the morning session while Nick Heidfeld struggled with the ride-height of his car. The team decided to make some significant changes to the aerodynamic set-up before the qualifying session. "The changes we made for the afternoon worked well," said technical director Willy Rampf. "We are pleased with the result and the direction that we have for tomorrow." Jordan Ford: Giancarlo Fisichella 12th, Ralph Firman 17th. Jordan's day was not an easy one as time was lost in the morning session when Ralph Firman suffered a left front suspension failure and went off. "We were happy with what we got done during the morning testing," said Gary Anderson, the team's chief engineer. "It was difficult to know where we stood but there were no dramas. It was the same during the qualifying runs. The only difficulty we had was understeer and tyre-graining which lost Giancarlo in particular a couple of positions. Otherwise we were OK." Jaguar Racing: Mark Webber 16th, Antonio Pizzonia No time. There was drama for Antonio Pizzonia in qualifying when his car refused to fire up and he missed his slot and so ended up without a time in the session. "We had fuel pressure problems for both drivers throughout the day," said Dr Mark Gillen. "So we sent them out with heavy fuel loads. The problem with Pizzonia was unrelated to that. The car would not fire up." Mark Webber had only three flying laps in the whole day but he blamed himself for some of that. "It was driver error today," he said. "And because my spin was a high-speed one we had to change the front wishbones which were chipped. My fault." Lucky Strike BAR Honda: Jenson Button 9th, Jacques Villeneuve 15th. There were mixed fortunes at BAR with Jenson Button ninth quickest but Villeneuve lagging behind. "This morning went like clockwork. Everything went according to plan," explained technical director Geoff Willis. "We did long runs checking tyre degradation and we were quite happy. But then this afternoon track temperatures varied a lot but we got the best of it. The drivers are complaining of oversteer and we have got to work on that." European Minardi Cosworth: Jos Verstappen 18th, Justin Wilson 19th. "We were very pleased with what we saw from the sector times," said team boss Paul Stoddart. "Justin was struggling a bit in the first sector because he does not know the track. We had no time to get the car right because this morning both drivers were struggling with the balance and handling but we are confident that we can split the Jaguars tomorrow and be sure you will not be seeing the same tactics we used in Melbourne unless of course it looks like rain." Panasonic Toyota Racing: Cristiano da Matta 10th, Olivier Panis 14th The Toyota team had a disappointing day. "Clearly we do not have the car right yet," said chief designer Gustav Brunner. "There was too much oversteer and we lacked traction as the cars were jumping about on the bumps. But we have an hour and a half tomorrow morning and we are confident that we can get it right and that a top 10 grid position is still a possibility." Bridgestone: Hisao Suganuma: "We are definitely satisfied with five cars in the top 10 and it looks like both the A and the B spec perform well on a single lap, but it will be critical to work a lot tomorrow in order to sort out the best race potential." Michelin: Pierre Dupasquier: "It was a standard session for us but it is not very pleasing to be two seconds away from everyone. It has no interest. We have three different types of tyre and two of them seem to be competitive."